Getting a hospital bill for $30,000 can be scary and upsetting, but medical identity theft involves a lot more than financial burdens created by someone who uses your personal information to get medical care. Medical fraud is one way that identities are abused by thieves, and the real danger is not the long term financial problems it can create, but the life threatening consequences it can have on an innocent patient.

Of the many faces identity fraud has, medical identity theft is the deadliest one. Your medical records could end up with the wrong medical history and diagnoses and these are the things that can cause serious problems for you when you do need medical care.

The majority of cases of medical fraud involve criminal rings that often work with corrupt medical staff, who even include doctors. They purposely file false claim’s with the insurance information of unsuspecting victims. Some of these rings are so well organized for this type of crime that they can even setup fake clinics. The medical billing system is complex and confusing for most people, but for medical staff that know how the system works, this is all too easy.

This type of identity fraud can be very lucrative, continuously setting up fake claims can produce millions of dollars a year and now that most medical records are electronically archived, this presents even more opportunity since now thieves can steal millions of records at once. After all the damage is done and the victim realizes that their records are wrong, they will have a very frustrating time correcting these entries, which in many cases remain on medical records permanently.

Dangers of a wrong diagnosis

If you’ve been a victim of medical identity theft, you’re immediately in danger, especially if you are not even aware that your medical records have been wrongfully altered. This could mean a life threatening diagnosis for you.

Imagine being given a medical prescription for medicine that you’re allergic to, or being denied treatment because your records show that you were already treated for a specific condition you’re now developing and the medical facility considers you a liability because of what’s on your record. What if you were told your recent xrays are keeping you from getting new xrays that you need in order to find out what’s wrong with you? What if you needed surgery and couldn’t get it because according to your medical records you’re currently recovering from a previous surgery?

These are only some of the instances in which medical identity theft can complicate and threaten your life. The consequences go on and on and even if your life is not threatened by the changes in your medical record, the financial problems you’ll face can certainly make you sick.

Medical insurance fraud costs millions of dollars every year, and if you become a liability to your medical insurance company you can also be dropped. Your medical benefits could be exhausted if someone else impersonates you and uses your information to make their claims. Insurance companies have policies for dealing with fraud and most will work with you to investigate the fraud, but if your benefits continue to be abused you could end up with no benefits.

Identity theft protection and medical fraud

Identity protection services became available as a way to combat the ongoing epidemic of identity theft crimes, which in the majority of cases still refers to credit fraud. But there are so many ways to take advantage of another person’s identity that these services make a lot of sense. Even though they have great security features to stop identity theft, their services still have not fully responded to the threat of medical identity theft. Not every identity theft protection service offers medical benefits protection and the few that do, offer only limited protection measures to prevent this threat.

For now the only company we have discovered that offers medical benefits protection is Trusted ID, the service basically includes periodically reviewing and monitoring medical services provided to the subscriber to make sure no one else other than the designated subscribers are receiving medical care.

In order to prevent medical insurance fraud and the problems it can create for subscribers, the protection offered by these companies needs to improve significantly. They can effectively stop identity theft when it comes to credit accounts and can even detect your social security number floating around black market websites on the internet, but because medical identity theft is more complex, it’s a bigger challenge to tackle it as well as credit related crimes.

In spite of these deficiencies, the services are still a great way to outsource the tasks of monitoring your identity. It’s no doubt that these services are improving and innovating to provide better protection and monitoring your medical benefits usage maybe exactly what you need to keep yourself safe from medical identity theft.

Medical identity theft is one of the most dangerous forms of identity fraud, the consequences created for the victim are overwhelming and in many cases permanent. The health care system does not seem to have a hold on the battle against medical fraud, in most cases patient identity verification is not only inadequate but it’s downright criminal.

Patient information is traded daily on many online illegal sites and this is typically the work of identity theft rings and scammers who make a handsome living from stealing and trading personal information like credit card numbers, social security records and health care records. How do these medical identity theft scams occur? How can someone’s information leave the confines of a medical facility and end up for sale somewhere on the internet?

In many cases these are inside jobs, medical care employees may be tempted to capture and farm patient information with the intention of selling it to identity theft criminal groups or trade it themselves. The information is then used to create fraudulent medical billings. Medical identity theft involves more than just someone using your medical benefits as if they were you.

The scams that surround medical identity theft

Bogus treatment billing – with the aid of dishonest health care employees, medical identity thieves can bill your health care provider for fake or inflated treatments. In many cases the people responsible for these acts are not even criminal gangs or outside people, but doctors and their staff who understand exactly how the insurance billing system works and are very aware of the discrepancies of the security and verification process when rendering services and producing billing statements.

Purchasing of legal narcotics with your health benefits – whether a criminal group or medical staff initiates this, your health care benefits can be used to purchase prescription drugs to sell or often feed addictions. Any kind of controlled narcotic substance can be billed to your insurance company without you even suspecting.

Getting free medical treatment – people who do not have their own medical benefits can receive medical treatment under your policy if they possess the needed information. Again the identity verification process is poorly done by health care facilities and the law does not require them to be experts in this area. When this happens the victim’s life is endangered because someone else’s medical history is now being recorded onto theirs.

Additional steps to prevent medical identity theft?

In our introductory article on The Truth About Medical Identity Theft, we listed some basic steps for protecting against this crime, here are some additional steps that everyone should practice routinely.

One thing you can do on your own is to review your medical benefit statements often, if your health care provider does not automatically send you statements about your benefits and how they’re being used, then ask for a statement if not monthly, at the very least quarterly.

Any letter or notification you receive from your health insurance you should open and read immediately, it is here where they may be bringing to your attention the use of specific treatments for conditions you do not suffer from. If you are being notified of a treatment or service you did not receive, you must dispute immediately.

Always shred old medical statements and old insurance cards, if your insurance card has your social security number on it, make a copy of it cut out the last four digits of your social security number, this way you can always use the copy for reference and take the actual card with you only when you need it.

Check you credit report diligently and as you check for any discrepancies and invalid credit account, look for anything related to medical costs, this would be a sign that your name has been used for medical services somewhere.

When you receive letters or bills from health care providers, doctor’s offices or other medical institutions, do not dismiss them as junk mail. These could be clues that your information has been used to start medical services.

If you do discover that your information has been used for the purpose of obtaining medical benefits illegally, you must report this to the credit bureaus and place fraud alerts on your credit files just as you would if your credit card number was being used.

Identity fraud and identity theft protection are an ongoing and ever changing task. In the case of medical fraud there aren’t many things that subscribers can do on their own to protect against it besides the tip mentioned above. What goes on within medical facilities and who has access to your information is in fact out of your hands so you must resort to a more sophisticated system of protection if you’re to avoid medical fraud.

Not every company that offers identity theft protection has medical identity theft prevention features available as well. This is more complicated task when it comes to identity theft and needs to be approached differently than credit and social security related thefts.

Companies that offer medical identity theft protection

Trusted ID is the only company we have found so far that specifically lists medical benefits protection as part of their identity theft protection system called ID-Freeze. This company can help you review your medical benefit statements to ensure that you and your family are the only ones being treated with your medical benefits. It can simplify the task if you use your medical benefits often.

More companies will be listed here if they truly cover you for medical benefits in the future.

The U.S. alone has 220 million internet users, that’s a 130.9 % increase since the year 2000, more people are connecting to the internet every year to conduct business, shop, pay bills and seek friendship and pleasure. The internet is a broad and vast market place with something for everyone, including identity thieves, who prey upon the unknowing and often careless users who may have little or no concern for computer identity theft.

With the faster and always on internet connections available today, online identity scams abound and speed and convenience, not security, are the main focus of marketing efforts by most ISP (Internet Service Providers) companies.

Internet users often store their information on their computers and these computers do not always have the adequate protection needed to prevent viruses and spyware programs from infecting their systems. Some of the information that these programs are able to gather are your name, address, social security number, credit card numbers and whatever else you keep stored on your local drive. With this information it is very easy for an identity thief to commit credit card theft by visiting the website of any one credit card company to apply for credit with your information. This applies to everyone from working professionals to stay at home moms, to children, the elderly and even the deceased. If their information is stored on a hard disk and that system is unprotected they are at high risk.

There are millions of identity theft cases reported every year and the majority of them occur online. Internet users are constantly compromising the security of their identities and need to embrace the concept of identity theft prevention and computer security while working online.

What is spyware?

Spyware is the type of software that is typically installed on your system without your knowledge with the sole purpose of changing your computer’s safety feature configurations or collecting your identity information. This is one of the preferred methods for identity thieves to gain access to your personal information. Typically spyware is downloaded and installed on your system quietly when you visit websites that automatically send you this software or it can also be installed along with other applications that you get for free, particularly if they’re pirated.

What exactly does spyware do?

One of the many things spyware can do is provide the necessary information for online thieves to commit identity fraud. Spyware will run as a background process and in a very stealth mode so you don’t know what’s going on. The spyware may be in the form of a keylogger, which records any information you type on your keyboard especially when you’re online paying bills or accessing your bank account. It may also be a program that opens up your computer by disabling firewall and antivirus software, making it easier for a hacker to gain access to your computer.

How to recognize spyware

Because spyware has been around for a very long time, the authors of this type of software have a lot of experience particularly with windows systems which is what spyware software targets, so over the years the software has gotten more sophisticated and it is more difficult to identify on your computer system. But some of the symptoms your computer may begin to show are things like:

• Drastic slow down of your computer or high CPU usage by processes that are not associated with any applications installed on your system.
• The home page on your browser is changed to a website you may never have visited before.
• New program icons appear on your start menu, desktop or systray.
• Random errors pop up on your desktop while you’re running normal operations but the errors are bogus or have little or no explanation in the dialect.
• New toolbars appear on your browse window.
• You notice registry keys that contain URLs to sites you don’t recognize.
• Unexpected redirects to other websites when you click on your bookmarks or type a URL in the address window.
• Your program icons open up other programs that you know were not installed by you.

Protecting your computer system from spyware and identity fraud

The only sure way to battle spyware and protect your self from computer identity theft is to make use of reliable anti-spyware software. Anti-virus software does not take care of spyware, so a separate subscription to anti-spyware is necessary for adequate protection. Just like your virus software, spyware protection software must be updated with new signatures constantly for it to be effective.

Spyware is just another tool that puts your identity in danger and it’s basically another aspect you must address if you want to keep your identity from being stolen. Identity scams can easily happen even if you don’t visit suspicious websites or install pirated software. Using the proper tools to protect your computer system from these malicious programs is an important step in identity theft prevention.

Computer identity theft is an ongoing threat but it isn’t as well known as other types of identity theft such as credit fraud, which is the most common. But computer fraud is one of the major causes of identity theft and online thieves have gotten more sophisticated in their methods reaching unprotected systems. Since the birth of computer networks and the internet, there have always been possibilities for exploiting the inherent lack of security of most computer systems particularly because most people run some version of the Microsoft operating system.

The truth about computer identity theft is that it is a real threat and in most cases it is difficult and costly for a lot of people to grasp and consistently implement security measures to protect their integrity and their information. Most people are not patient enough to learn what it takes to properly prevent this type of identity fraud and this is perhaps one of the biggest reasons why online identity thieves are so successful. There are increasing numbers of internet users who do not have the proper security software installed on their systems and this only creates opportunities for fraud.

Some of the activities that invite internet identity theft are:

Email Scams (phishing) – Most free online Web mail providers like yahoo, hotmail and gmail offer spam filters that can keep your inbox somewhat clear of spam mail, however they’re not 100% successful at keeping all spam mail out. Today spammers, who are in fact amateur sellers and in many cases identity thieves, have gotten better at getting past the spam filters and continue to make attempts to collect sensitive information from victims by posing as legitimate representatives from financial institutions and their success rate is not as low as most would imagine.

Internet auctions – One of the best ways to find bargains online today is through online auctions, close to 50% of online crimes reported today originate on online auction sites. The most important thing to consider when dealing with online market places is how you provide or receive payment for an item you’re bidding on or getting payment for. Sites like eBay offer a secure payment method known as paypal, which offers a level of security for both buyers and sellers that’s not provided by any other method of payment. Typically when a buyer or seller insists on getting payment in the form of personal checks or cashiers checks you’re better off buying somewhere else.

Online shopping – this is an easy and often fun way of getting things you need, but it can also be risky depending on where you end up doing your shopping. You can become a victim of Internet identity theft if you render your financial information to the wrong website. Well known sites can sometimes be spoofed and this is not uncommon but the biggest risk is doing your shopping at less than well known or reputable websites. No matter what you need to buy online it is best to stick to the bigger and more secure market places where can have a little more security.

P2P Security risks – Peer 2 Peer file sharing became a popular way of trading information online particularly music, video and software. Most of these P2P client applications that are freely distributed in fact provide an illegal medium for trading proprietary information, but the biggest danger to the user is the exposure to viruses, spyware and other intrusions into their computer system. Security considerations, particularly computer identity theft are never a concern in the design of these P2P networks and in turn they leave lots of open doors that can allow others to copy and steal files on your system you do not mean to share.

Social networking sites – Social networks are huge on the internet, the web 2.0 revolution is in full effect. Social networks allow you to enlarge your circle of contacts and friends online and provide new generation technology and methods of sharing information and networking. These networks however useful, can also increase your exposed in a negative way, to people with intentions other than friendship. Social media sites can be used to farm user information and users may not always realize that they’re in danger, so as a general rule it is always recommended to use aliases for IDs and to never give any specific details about one’s self to these online groups.

Wireless access points – this is another entry point and a common cause of computer fraud, when this is not done correctly, wireless technology can be dangerous. The key to security when it comes to wireless networking is to use WPA encryption and to secure laptops and PCs with antivirus and anti-spyware software that updates automatically. These steps are often overlooked while the users are mostly preoccupied with the convenience of mobility and freedom that wireless networks can provide. Because wireless networks work by broadcasting signals it is very easy to pick up other peoples networks and hack into them if the encryption is not configured properly and no security access keys are in place.

Computer disposal – If you like many others like to recycle or donate things you no longer need and your computer is rather old and you’re planning on donating it, it’s important that you take the time to properly wipe the hard drive on it before you present it to its new owner. If you feel you don’t really have anything of value on it, you may have internet cache collected on your browser’s history, and even if you’ve deleted all important files, they could be recovered with the right tools. So a complete and total wipe of the hard drive is necessary or you could be giving away more than you planned on.